Monday, September 30, 2024

RIP, Charlie Hustle & Mount Mutombo

(This is the first Pete Rose-related item I could lay my hands on: Street and Smith's Official Yearbook 1982 for baseball. From about 1981 to 1986, this was the most anticipated annual magazine for me each spring. It was the bible for the statistics from the previous MLB season and the rosters/previews for the upcoming season. For me, USA Today's daily sports section and then USA Today Baseball Weekly gradually took its place. These days, the magazine I most look forward to is Fortean Times. Don't judge.)

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024 — On this day, as the southeastern U.S. continues search-and-rescues and picking up the shattered pieces after the depredations of Helene; as Israel widens its military operations against terrorist states throughout the tinderbox of the Middle East; as we continue a stifling streak of unseasonable 100-plus-degree days in bone-dry central Arizona; as we consider what a presidential candidate truly meant when he talked about the need for "one really violent day" to combat crime; and as we prepare to celebrate former President Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday tomorrow, two baseball teams teams played a regular-season-ending doubleheader in Atlanta's suburbs, not far from a massive plume of dark smoke smelling of chemicals emanating from an industrial plant fire that forced thousands across multiple counties to either evacuate or shelter in place. 

As the second game of the doubleheader that sent both the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves into the MLB playoffs ended, the world learned of the death at age 83 of Peter Edward Rose Sr., who is MLB's all-time hits leader but was banned from the sport in 1989 for gambling on baseball games. Rose's great hustle and talent on the baseball diamond will forever be intertwined with the shame he brought upon himself by betting on games, including his own team's games, and then denying and lying about his misdeeds for many years thereafter. 

I first became aware of Pete Rose around 1979, when I was 8 and living in southern New Jersey and he was playing in his first season with the Philadelphia Phillies, at age 38. The next year, Rose helped the Phillies win their first World Series championship and became a legend in the city, at least until the summer of 1989, when the permanent ban issued by Bart Giamatti, who himself would be dead in eight days, broke the hearts of many of his fans. Not long after, Rose served five months in federal prison for tax evasion.

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Another professional athlete who played in Philadelphia died today. His full name was Dikembe Mutombo Mpolondo Mukamba Jean-Jacques Wamutombo. 

Dikembe Mutombo brought his 7-foot-2 frame to Philadelphia and played basketball for the 76ers in the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 NBA seasons. He specialty was blocking shots. Off the court, his specialty was doing humanitarian work. As The Associated Press noted: "He became a global ambassador for the NBA and served on the boards of many organizations, including Special Olympics International, the CDC Foundation and the National Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. While he was playing for Atlanta in 1997, he founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation to improve living conditions in his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo."

“He loved others with every ounce of his being. That’s what made him so accessible. That’s what made him real. Dikembe Mutombo was salt and light, and today, on the 30th of September, 2024, he has been called to rest," his son, Ryan Mutombo, said.

Mutombo was 58. He died — and doesn't everything just seem interconnected these days? — in Atlanta.

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